Beware of pirates (From The Northern Echo)

Beware of pirates

12:13pm Saturday 6th June 2009 in

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Viv Hardwick finds out that promising tenor Allan Clayton has his toughest challenge at Newcastle next week in Opera North’s season.

THE theme of pirates taking a hostage and the misunderstandings when East meets West could be headline stories plucked from any newspaper over the last few months, but it’s also the subject of Mozart’s 1782 opera, The Abduction From The Seraglio, which Opera North brings to Tyneside next week.

This new English-sung version, directed by Tim Hopkins, opens the company’s week-long season at Newcastle Theatre Royal, and provides the biggest test so far for promising young tenor Allan Clayton as the opera’s hero, Belmonte.

“It isn’t performed that often.

It’s a difficult piece because the drama in it is normally quite dislocated from the music. This new version has tried to address this by slightly changing the dialogue and amending the story to allow the opera to use a narrator and make a little more sense now, which is great,”

explains 28-year-old Clayton.

He plays a nobleman “typically not a wet fish, but not a stirring tough guy either”

who vows to rescue his betrothed Constanze (Kate Valentine) from a fate worse than death in the clutches of a Turkish Pasha (Martin Hyder).

“A plot with pirates and the theme of East meets West is about as current as you could want it to be. I think Opera North had this production in mind for a while so the relevance is a nice coincidence.

This show turns things on their head which is interesting for me in a lead tenor role which tend to be difficult to play because they can be quite straight. This is a lot of react to and I have to get down to rescuing Constanze.

“Musically it’s a huge role and one of the biggest Mozart roles in terms of the number of notes you sing,” says Clayton, who made his Opera North debut last year in the company’s acclaimed production, The Adventures of Pinocchio.

“I had a small part in that so it’s been nice to come back and be even more involved. I’m also coming back in the autumn to perform in Cosi Fan Tutte (which plays Newcastle Theatre Royal on November 17 and 20),”

he says.

Clayton started out as a Worcester Cathedral chorister and won a scholarship to St John’s Cambridge.

In 2004, he was one of the first four Royal Academy winners of the inaugural Sir Elton John scholarship, the result of Sir Elton – who was a classical pianist at the academy – raising £1m at New York concerts to fund the award.

“I auditioned and was told of this anonymous donor and they wouldn’t tell me who it was. I only found out six months later when I went off to meet him before I started at the academy.

“So far the funding of my studies has been unbelievable and people like Sir Elton have been so supportive, otherwise I wouldn’t have been to afford to go to music college. It was a phenomenal thing he’s done and nobody normally knows about it apart from the academy itself,”

he says. “Opera North was my first job out of college and then I did Albert Herring at Glyndebourne last summer. I think everybody has ambition, but as a singer, you can’t sing beyond your years,” adds Clayton.

After so much struggle to win his first stage roles, the singer isn’t unhappy about the instant fame of other classical performers. He admits that he was an avid watcher of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent.

“I voted for Flawless in the earlier rounds and Diversity in the final. I think that singers like Susan Boyle are a bit of a novelty. Others like Russell Watson have the full package, a good-looking guy with the right background and a family man,”

Clayton says.

“It’s usually the blue rinse brigade who are chasing my autograph at the stage door… or my mum getting me to sing one of my CDs,” he jokes.

■ The Abducation From The Seraglio runs on Tuesday and Friday at Newcastle Theatre Royal. Don Carlos runs Wednesday and next Saturday and Paradise Moscow is staged on Thurday. Tickets: £14.50- £54.50. Box Office: 08448-112-121.